


touch and stay

by postelectric



Category: The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Genre: F/M, Mrs. Brisby's first name, and Justin lapses occasionally into Shakespearean prose, discussion of Jonathan and Nicodemus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postelectric/pseuds/postelectric
Summary: Mrs. Brisby took a breath and started again. “Nicodemus said that Jonathan never told me about NIMH because he would stay young and I wouldn’t, but I would have - I would have noticed, wouldn’t I have? So that makes no sense unless Jonathan - unless Jonathan never planned on staying to watch me grow old.”“That’s not true,” Justin said softly. “You know that’s not true.”
Relationships: Mrs. Brisby/Jonathan, Mrs. Brisby/Justin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 89





	touch and stay

**Author's Note:**

> don't mind me busting in 35 years late with another "Mrs. Brisby gives Justin the Stone" fic. whoever put this movie in its entirety on youtube needs an award.

“A rat in the noble home of Brisby. What will the neighbors say?” The rakish way Justin offered Mrs. Brisby his arm to was too debonair to be unintentional. There was mischief in his tired face when he looked down at her.

“Would you hush,” she scolded, but was smiling like a fool and still leaning against his offered arm when they stepped out into the night. “Oh, that’s better,” she sighed, her nausea fading with the touch of crisp air. She filled her lungs with it. “I hadn’t realized.” 

“Realized?” Justin prompted.

“It was just so much,” Mrs. Brisby said, hoping he would understand. 

She had awoken in her own home, in her own bed, to the wide eyes of her four frightened children - all four of her beautiful, brave, _alive_ children - staring down at her. Feverish, with the palms of her paws beginning to blister unnoticed, she had held them each and wiped their tears and tucked them in before stumbling from the bedroom to find a rat sitting at her kitchen table while Mr. Ages dressed the wound on his arm. They were bickering good-naturedly in stage whispers and someone had started a fire, the blaze crackling softly in the hearth. Mrs. Brisby had touched the Stone at her breast in search of grounding but the room had continued to swim. 

“I would think I’m about to faint,” she had said to no one in particular, “if I hadn't just woken up.” 

“My dear girl,” Mr. Ages had begun, pushing his spectacles up his nose, but Justin was already standing. His paw between her shoulder blades guided her to the stairs. “What you need,” the rat had told her, “is to breathe.”

“But the children -”

“Are safe, and will survive without you momentarily. Ages will watch them, he loves children,” Justin had assured her over the doctor’s protesting as they made their exit. “You need some air, Mrs. Brisby.” 

Outside now, still on Justin's arm, she focused on the cool earth beneath her feet and the dew gathered at the tips of the stalks of grass above her head, catching the moonlight like crystal. “I hadn’t realized,” she said again, “how long I’ve been terrified.”

“Pardon my language, but you’ve had one hell of a time from the sound of it.” There was a smile in Justin’s voice. “All those heroics.”

“You’re one to talk of heroics - oh, Justin, your arm! Forgive me,” she apologized, stepping away. The moment the stability of him was gone she tightened her cloak around her shoulders, less certain on her feet.

“Well, in your defense, I did offer,” he told her, running his opposite hand down his forearm where she had clung. “You’re a lightweight besides. No harm done.”

“Surely you - I must be keeping you from your responsibilities. If the rats are leaving for Thorn Valley by morning you must be needed?”

Justin walked beside her as he always did, his hands clasped loosley behind his back in a picture of modest confidence. They had begun to stroll. “We rats are a self-sufficient bunch,” he told her. “I’m skeptical that the entire operation has crumbled in my temporary absence.”

Mrs. Brisby peered up into his face. “You’re stalling!” she accused with delight.

He had not the grace to look even a bit ashamed. “I admit nothing,” he said. “But if I were, would you blame me? The coming weeks will be difficult, to say the least. And the sky is ... well. When you live underground, you tend to forget that the night isn’t dark at all.”

She gazed heavenward with him. The storm from earlier had reduced to distant lightning - _electricity_ , Mrs. Brisby thought - and the stars were revealed in its wake. “I couldn’t imagine it. Living underground, I mean.”

“You get used to it.” Justin shrugged. “Though we went from living in cages to living in a hole, so perhaps there wasn’t much to adjust to, really.”

Mrs. Brisby tried to catch a glimpse of Justin’s expression but his face was above her, tilted to the sky. “Well,” she said softly, “at least the Dog Star is shining for you tonight. You won’t be lost.”

“Is it?” the rat asked politely, in the tone of someone who didn’t understand a word of what had been said. Mrs. Brisby knew it well. 

“Yes, the Dog Star. In the constellation?”

Justin raised his eyebrows at her. He was a rat of NIMH, she remembered, weaving magic from a hole under a rosebush. He would never stop to think of names for stars he never saw. “It’s just there,” Mrs. Brisby said, pointing above their heads. “The brightest one.” She drew the constellation around it for him, and then the one beside it, the Serpent, and then the Plough, the Crab, the Scales. “They have different names in some of the stories, but I only know them by these. I taught Jonathan, too.” 

“Jonathan did always did have his head in the clouds,” Justin murmured, not unkindly. 

They stood in silence, staring up. “Do you miss him, Justin?” Mrs. Brisby asked suddenly. Her voice was thick.

“Mrs. Brisby?”

She smiled, a rueful thing, and looked to the ground. “Surely we’re acquainted enough to do away with titles. Please call me by my name.”

“Mrs. Brisby - sweet lady, forgive me, but I don’t know your name.”

“Jonathan never mentioned it?”

“Never to me, it seems. I loved him like a brother, but I would - ma’am?” He reached out, but withdrew again before he could touch her unbidden, more a gentleman than any beast who had ever accused him of savagery. “What did I do to trouble you?” 

“Nothing, you’ve been wonderful. It’s only that - oh, I’m sorry, I can’t say it. It’s an awful thought.”

She offered her blistered hands out to him and this time his rose to cradle them, his fingers half the length of her forearm. His thumbs fell against the delicate insides of her wrists, over her pulse. “Mrs. Brisby, any man who claims to have heard unkind words fall from your lips I would know for a liar,” he said. “Please tell me.”

“Well, it’s just, after learning all of this about Jonathan I thought …” Unable to meet Justin’s eyes, she took a breath and started again. “Nicodemus said that Jonathan never told me about NIMH because he would stay young and I wouldn’t, but I would have - I would have noticed, wouldn’t I have? So that makes no sense unless Jonathan - unless Jonathan never planned on staying to watch me grow old.”

“That’s not true,” Justin said softly. “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I, though? Justin, it’s almost as if I didn’t know Jonathan at all. I always thought his past must have been so terrible for him to never want to speak of it, but I couldn’t have imagined the truth. He wanted to protect you all, but how could he love me and never - never even think that I would …” She could feel dampness clinging to her lashes, the first cracks in a dam that she had not realized was breaking, and the shame was so powerful it stole her breath. “I’m sorry,” she told Justin. “I’m being silly. You have so many important things to do.”

“This is important,” the rat said. His voice was thick with something Mrs. Brisby couldn't decipher. “Mrs. Jonathan Brisby, I may not know your name, but that’s not because Jonathan never spoke of you.” On her arms his paws were unwavering, gentle but firm. “I remember when he met you. I was there the day after, when he came to work on some project, and you were the girl he was going to marry. That’s what he called you for weeks, months even, when he wasn’t telling us about the most beautiful girl in the world. Who was also you, I should mention.” 

Justin was smiling now, a soft thing. She could hear it in his voice. “When you married, you became ‘his beautiful wife’ to the rest of us because that’s the only way he ever referred to you, to my knowledge. That pragmatic troglodyte Ages nearly beat Jonathan over the head for it more times than the rest of us asked him to bring you around.”

Mrs. Brisby’s laugh was watery. “Mr. Ages never did strike me as a romantic.” 

“He's not changed a bit in all the time I’ve known him. Mrs. Brisby, I hope you will forgive me for speaking of things I know not about, but finding you was the first real touch of light in a whole lifetime of blackness for Jonathan. Every day in that lab was a dark one. So were many of the days after, knowing we lived in NIMH’s shadow.”

“They don’t have to be dark anymore, Justin. You can be free now.”

“You are a miracle,” the rat said, as if to himself, though he had not once looked away from her face. “I think Jonathan kept secrets from you to do just that. He could escape NIMH entirely when he was with you and the family you made. By introducing you to our world he would have been forced to sacrifice that freedom. That’s a hard thing to ask of anyone.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Brisby, the sudden relief of it giving her a headrush. She closed her eyes and gave in to it, letting galaxies bloom behind her eyelids like a mirror of the sky above. “No, that’s wonderful. I was so afraid ... so afraid that maybe he didn’t love me the way I thought.”

“I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead,” Justin said softly. “But for what it’s worth, I wish I could better justify the pain our secrets caused you. I wish there had been a way to explain it all without changing your memories of Jonathan. I am sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for. None of you. And you least of all, Justin.” When Mrs. Brisby opened her eyes again it was to the rat’s head bowed as if in supplication. She studied the long slope of his forehead. “Promise that you will visit us?”

“Dear lady, you give me no credit,” Justin said, looking up at her from under his lashes with some sly mischief that could not hide the melancholy in him, a vast and complicated sorrow. It was a burden Jonathan too had carried, and one that she had only glimpsed when he thought she would not notice. Justin wore his openly, without shame. “A thousand Dragons couldn’t keep me away. Ages would go feral with no one to antagonize him.” 

Mrs. Brisby took the rat’s arm again, his uninjured one she made sure, and they began to amble back through the field toward the Brisby home. There was no movement from inside the house, and Mrs. Brisby considered the possibility that Mr. Ages had indeed achieved the miracle of getting the children to stay in bed. “You’re still troubled,” Justin observed, though Mrs. Brisby had said nothing. 

“No more than you, I think,” she returned. He was looking to the windows of the Brisby home as they approached, and his expression still reminded her of Jonathan on the days the weight of a world she hadn't known existed had made him quiet. “Will the journey to Thorn Valley be very dangerous?”

“Well, it might be no stroll through the garden, but we’ll manage alright. We always do.” His free hand found hers, tucked in the crook of his opposite elbow. “Although I never imagined doing it without Nicodemus.”

The colossal weight of his unpacked grief was there in his voice for her to witness. Empathy tightened like a fist around her heart. “I am so sorry you have to leave him. I wish I could have known him better,” Mrs. Brisby said. “I think he would be very proud of you, Justin.”

“I can only hope.” They had returned to the door of the Brisby home. “Will you watch over him for me, Mrs. Brisby? He and I both will sleep better for it I think.” 

“Of course I will,” she promised. The first thing the rats had done that night in preparation for their exodus was bury Nicodemus in a humble grave at the edge of the field where no plow would disturb him. In their race against the clock they had not had the time to spare for ceremony, but it was a fine resting spot, Mrs. Brisby thought, raised just enough that it would catch the sunrise before the rest of the farmland. “But Justin, promise me you will be safe?” Standing on the stoop of her home she took both of his big hands in hers. “Please.”

He inhaled sharply, as if it hurt him to hear her implore. “My dear lady, you have no earthly idea how much I wish I could make that promise. It’s a journey through hell and high water in both directions. But,” he said, his handsome face lit by the soft light spilling from the windows, “I will do my absolute _damndest_ to return to you in one piece. I promise that.” 

She gazed at him: broad shoulders, laughter lines etched at the corners of his eyes, chivalrous to a fault. _Courage of the heart_ , she thought, warmth spreading from the place on her chest where the Stone rested. It was a kind warmth this time, an internal one, softer than the searing fever of the Stone ablaze in her hands but no less overwhelming. She let it bring a smile to her face as she reached up to take Justin by the collar, and he allowed her to pull him down to kneel like a man about to be knighted. “Take this with you,” she said, slipping the Stone from around her neck and over his head. It fell high on his chest, just beneath his clavicle. She heard the touch of it against his skin whisk his breath away.

“Mrs. Brisby - I can’t. Jonathan left it for you.”

“I know that,” she said firmly. “And now I’m loaning it to someone who needs it more.”

“Mrs. Brisby -”

“Hush,” she insisted, resting her hands on his shoulders. “My children are safe. The plow will come and go and everything will return to normal. Your need is much greater than mine. If it might keep you safe and bring you back to us someday, I will feel much better knowing you have it than I would keeping it for myself. Please accept it.” 

Justin exhaled into the space between them as if he hadn’t realized his breath had stopped. “Alright,” he agreed. His mischief had returned when he looked at her, all tangled up in the affectionate wonder he wore that almost certainly crossed some line of etiquette or another. “You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Brisby.”

“Good.” Her heart was fluttering. “And my name,” she said, “is Elizabeth.” 

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” he echoed in a voice that made her cheeks heat. “You give me more than I deserve. Thank you,” he said, and she wanted to tell him that it had nothing to do with deserving, only the way it had felt to have someone to trust in the whirlwind of discovery that there was a whole world beneath the ground in which Jonathan’s name was both a weapon and key. 

“Now you _must_ return safely,” she told him, “so that you can give the Stone back to me. Someday. When you no longer need it.” 

The rat brushed his lips to the back of her hand as he rose, one palm pressed flat over the pendant. “And your name?” he asked, roguish again. 

“Yours to keep, I suppose,” she laughed. “If you want it.”

“Always. Elizabeth. I should -”

“Go.” She smiled, sad. “I’ve kept you long enough. Your people need you.”

“Yes.” He cast her a look that she could not find the words to translate. “Mrs. Elizabeth Brisby, I am glad you came to our rosebush.” It sounded bittersweet as his hand slipped from hers, reluctant, and very much like he was saying _I’m glad you came home_. 

“Me too, Justin.” 

She watched his retreat from the doorstep until he disappeared with the Stone into the tall grass between the field and farm, and with him went some ghost of Jonathan’s that Mrs. Brisby had not realized had lain heavy across her shoulders. The relief of closure, hollow in her chest and cool like a mint leaf on her tongue, was left in its wake, and she tasted it still when the stars faded into the grey of pre-dawn and Mr. Ages made his leave with a brisk pat on her arm. It was still there within her later when she drew her cloak about herself once more and scurried to the hill at the edge of the fields, leaving a trail of footprints on the dewey ground behind her. 

Nicodemus’ grave was a perfect rectangle of fresh dirt with a wooden cross taller than her at the head, and she sat beside it as the plow rumbled to life in the distance. NIMH would come a little later she supposed, when the peachy halo of the sun had done more than begin to break free of the horizon. “I think you would be very proud of us all,” Mrs. Brisby told Nicodemus. 

The world brightened around her, full of birdsong and bigger than it had been just hours before, home to things more beautiful and terrible than she had ever imagined. Justin, traveling east, would have been touched by the same sunlight before the Fitzgibbons’ rooster even crowed, and that knowledge settled so lovely and comforting inside of her that Mrs. Brisby turned her face up into the warmth of the sky and smiled. The ache of her burned hands was dull in comparison to the splendor of the dawn, and still lingered the ghost of familiar weight against her chest like a phantom limb; like a tether; like a stone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Mrs. Elizabeth Brisby is named after her voice actress, Elizabeth Hartman. <3


End file.
